March Brings Both The Expected And Unexpected Focus On Nature

March 06, 1988|by TOM FEGELY, The Morning Call

Contrary to popular opinion, I like March. Maybe it's because it follows February, my least favored month of the dozen from which we get to choose. Of course, March is no match for May or October but the month in which spring makes its debut does hold plenty of promise.

"In like a lion and out like a lamb," is the general nature of March but over the years I've found the adage reversed.

Last week a small band of turkey vultures rode the thermals over South Mountain and several great blue herons posed on ice-rimmed ponds in the southern part of the county. Add to that the sightings of blackbird flocks and cardinals, doves and Carolina wrens practicing their courting songs plus a restlessness in the red-tailed hawk that's patrolled the woodlot behind my home all winter, and it's sure sign that spring is around the bend.

To me March's attractions are composed of the expected and the unexpected. Last March I unsuccessfully stalked a pair of jacksnipe dipping their long bills in the mud on the edge of a temporary pool in a cow pasture near Limeport. Snipe aren't common hereabouts and any sighting is special. Once they caught my movement as I moved near them in the long grasses they noisily flew off in their typical erratic flight. A day later they were back and a quiet sneak again resulted in their flight although I did snap a fair photo of one before they departed.

The snipe's cousin, the woodcock, also arrives in March. Back when I kept records of the arrival dates of birds I'd find the timberdoodles showing up somewhere around March 20 - give or take a couple days. Like other birds, they'd be heard before being seen; often after dark as they performed their courting rituals in a field behind my Coopersburg home. The call, described as a peeent and vaguely resembling that of the city nighthawk, is a prerequisite to mating. When the male ascends into the twilight sky and begins its ritualistic dive it utters a series of chirps - an act it may perform many times before finding a receptive, albeit equally strange-looking, female.

Although the woodcock can still be heard at varied places across the valley, the particular field where I always saw them is now a housing project and the call of the woodcock is no longer heard in spring. Surely more such habitats, for everything from woodcock to whitetails, will be lost to malls, houses and highways as the Lehigh Valley gets swallowed in its own "progress."

The birdfeeder may also yield surprises this month. Redpolls, pine siskins, fox sparrows, purple finches and others who discover the seeds may pause for a sampling but don't expect them to stay. In the six years I've been at my new southern Lehigh County residence I've onlybeen visited by evening grosbeaks once - two years ago during March. Normally they're seen at the forepart of winter. Obviously the welcome yellow birds were on their slow ways north and had discovered my seed-feeder along the way. They stayed several hours, until the sunflower seeds, were gone, then departed.

I'm keeping my eyes peeled for them again, although I don't expect to see any.

Vast flocks of cedar waxwings are always a welcome treat and March brings them northward. A mountain ash, pyrocanthus or multiflora rose with fruits intact is sufficient cause for getting the handsome birds to pause. Encountering a nomadic convention of waxwings is a special treat for the photographer who can usually move close to the trusting birds for frame- filling photos. Their as apt to show in the suburbs as in the countryside, wherever the fruits and berries are found.

The great-horned owl is the champ in jumping the traditional spring nesting season. It's the earliest of the nesters, having laid its eggs last month, the 30-35 day incubation period will end by mid to late March. In another few weeks the homely owlets will be stretching their tentative wings, yet without the necessary primaries to fly.

Find a horned owl's nestlings and it will be noted that they are of uneven ages. Incubation began with the first egg and subsequent eggs, up to three but occasionally more, hatched later - the younger siblings never quite catching up with the older one. Yet, by the time May's crop of songbirds heads into the area to begin nesting duties, the youngsters will be ready to go it alone - baby squirrels, cottontails and even other birds probably their first kills. Songbirds make up a major portion of the "air tiger's" diet in spring and the fledglings ready to hunt the April woods will grow to giant size by summer's end.